CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
259 km from Waterloo to Waterloo, about 4 h 28 of riding. The stops in between: Beffroi de Thuin, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat and back through Beffroi de Thuin. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. Much of it runs through woodland.
The beeches in the Sonian Forest grow so tall and straight that people call it the cathedral forest, and once you stand under them on a misty autumn morning the name stops sounding like tourist talk. This great woodland on the southeastern edge of Brussels covers thousands of hectares, and most of the famous columns of grey trunks were planted in the late eighteenth century, when the Austrian Habsburgs ruled these lands and their foresters reshaped the old wood. A few patches, including the Tict reserve near La Hulpe and Waterloo, are left to grow wild with no felling at all, and they form part of the UNESCO listing for the ancient and primeval beech forests of Europe, a chain of reserves stretching across the continent.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de Thuin.
Thuin sits on a rocky spur above the Sambre, and from the river it looks like a town that climbed a hill to keep its feet dry. At the top stands the belfry, a tall square tower with an onion-shaped spire that was originally the bell tower of a collegiate church and survived when the church itself did not. Since 1999 it has been part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France, a reminder that towns in this region measured their freedom in bells, towers and charters.
Read the complete Beffroi de Thuin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Thuin comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat.
At Condé-sur-l'Escaut, right on the Belgian border, the coal basin of northern France reaches its eastern end, and the old mining site of Chabaud-Latour shows how industry and nature have come to terms. A pit operated here for decades, and today what remains is a landscape of slag heaps, ponds formed by mining subsidence, woods and wetlands, part of the UNESCO site of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 130 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat. Next is back through Beffroi de Thuin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Thuin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Thuin, late in the day. Next is Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict. That is the ride.
Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict → Beffroi de Thuin is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Thuin → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → back through Beffroi de Thuin is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Beffroi de Thuin → Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.